A few days ago, Doug Polk started on a challenge to make $100,000 in a month playing on the newly launched sweepstakes poker site ClubWPT Gold.
Polk, who used to hold the title as the best heads-up player alive, plans to accomplish his goal playing primarily deep-stack $3/$6 HU tables (as these are the highest available stakes). So, it is back to basics for the man who managed to crack the code behind one-on-one poker long before solvers became a thing.
His motivation for embarking on what’s bound to be a very demanding challenge, requiring him to play very long hours every single day, is not completely clear.
On the surface, he is doing it to attract players to sign up for ClubWPT Gold using his code, but he will also be giving all the profit from the challenge back to those players, with a minimum of $50,000 guaranteed for all who sign up regardless of the final result.
So, making money, in the long run, is certainly a part of the plan (as Polk is certainly a very business-savvy individual), but the amount of effort this challenge will require probably doesn’t translate to the best ROI.
Personally, I think a big part of it is for the sake of the challenge itself, and testing if he’s still “got it.” And by “it,” I don’t mean just the skills but everything else that is required to take on the grind and come out on the other side a winner.
A few days into the challenge, Polk is down a few buy-ins (subject to change by the time this article is published), but short-term swings aren’t that important. The real question is, is this a realistic challenge and can he achieve and sustain such a big win rate over the next few weeks to get him across the finish line?
The Good: Probably the Softest Games Around
It wasn’t by accident that Doug Polk decided to pick this challenge up on ClubWPT Gold. Thanks to its huge marketing efforts prior to launch, the operator has managed to attract a substantial player field that consists largely of recreational players.
Knowing today’s online poker landscape, it’s pretty safe to say these are the softest $3/$6 games one can find anywhere, barring private poker clubs (but these are in a category of their own).
To hit his ambitious goal, Polk needs to profit about $3,500 per day, which is approximately three deep buy-ins of $1,200. That translates to 600-ish big blinds.
If Polk can keep up with his super-long, 10+ hour sessions, playing 1,000 — 1,500 hands every day, he’d need a win rate of about 40BB/100+. That’s a huge win rate and not something you’d expect at any kind of traditional poker site these days.
However, if these numbers can be achieved anywhere, it has to be a newly-launched sweepstakes site with a massive recreational base. And if anyone can go on a tear like this, it is the man who even the best players in the world refused to sit back in a day.
The Bad: Conditions Aren’t Perfect
ClubWPT Gold may be very soft, but there are other factors at play that will certainly represent an obstacle on Polk’s way to reaching his goal.
The software itself is pretty basic. First of all, multi-tabling isn’t allowed, which significantly cuts into the number of hands per hour he can put in. Even the ability to add just one more table would help tremendously.
There are no note-taking or color-coding features, either, which makes it harder to keep track of players and their tendencies. An important part of this challenge is staying clear of good players, and that would be much easier with these features.
The delay between one hand finishing and the next one starting is fairly noticeable as well. This may not be a huge deal in general, but when you are trying a challenge like this, those seconds add up over time, cutting into your hand per hour.
Before the challenge started, Polk was optimistic that he could play 50,000 hands by the deadline, which makes the $100k goal more realistic. But with all these distractions coming into play, this number could be hard to reach.
To Polk’s credit, he’s really been in the hard grind mode to kick things off, and the dedication is certainly there. That brings us to the final part of this article.
The Ugly: Swings, Variance, Trolls, and More
Grinding poker for 10+ hours every day is extremely difficult. No matter how good a player you are, natural swings in the game can be extremely brutal, and when playing deep-stacked heads-up games, a few bad coolers can really set you back.
Polk isn’t new to this whole song and dance. He’s seen and lived it all, and he came out the winner, but he is still a human being. A few bad sessions in a row can take their toll.
The consummate professional that he is, it’s hard to imagine that Doug’s game would deteriorate, but his willingness to show up tomorrow and do it all again for another 10 hours might. During bad stretches, it’s not always easy to just dust off and get back to it.
Adding to the pressure is the fact that he is doing it all live in front of thousands of people. Most of them are there to support Polk on this journey, but some are there just to troll. After all, this is the online poker community, we don’t lack trolls in our ranks.
So far, Doug has kept his spirits up and dealt with all of it pretty well, but it is still early days, and the goalpost is still as far away as it was a few days back.
Can Doug Polk do it? Can he laugh at the face of variance, outwit all the trolls, and outplay all the vlog watchers? I don’t know if I’d put my money on it, but I certainly wouldn’t bet against him, either!